Saturday, March 31, 2012

Obama is what I call a classic “boogey man politician,” in that underlying his rhetoric is always a ”bad guy” who he is blaming for all that is wrong in the nation and/or that you should be afraid of.

He fear mongers more subtly than George W. Bush, but every bit as vigorously, even using the same phrases now against Iran that Bush used against Iraq when he says that the “window of opportunity for diplomatic resolution is closing.” I guess when you have limited policies you are stuck with limited rhetoric, regardless of intelligence quotient.

He variously targets the insurance industry as the “bad guy of the day,” or rich people who “aren’t paying their fair share” or, with today’s gasoline prices, oil companies. He doesn’t care that oil companies are actually not the culprits in the gas price issue, they make a better “bad guy” than do the complex issues that really do drive gas prices up.

So, in order to punish the oil companies for their predatory practices, and the usurious 7% profit margins that they are taking us for, he wants to raise their taxes eliminate their tax cuts. (When you eliminate a payroll tax cut for individuals it’s called “raising their taxes,” but that doesn’t apply for corporations; eliminating tax cuts does not, apparently, raise their taxes.)

Yesterday he made both pitches in one speech, blaming oil companies for high prices and demanding that their tax cuts be eliminated. That’s a little bit insulting, really, because he cannot actually believe that the way to force a company to reduce its selling price is to raise its cost of doing business, but he seems to think that the voters won’t notice that and will just applaud his intent to punish the oil companies.

And, of course, the people at his rallies cheer wildly when he says that, so to that extent he’s right. But those people are his loyalists and will cheer wildly at anything he says. He could say that the Pope is a Presbyterian and they would cheer wildly in agreement. That may make him feel good but, news flash, all of those people are going to vote for him anyway. He doesn’t even need to make a speech and they are going to vote for him.

It turns out that “diplomatic resolution” apparently consists merely of us not bombing Iran, because yesterday Obama announced that any nation purchasing oil from Iran will be “punished” by the United States. He even said that removing Iran’s oil from the world’s supply will not affect the price of oil, which is nothing short of delusional. A week ago he was talking about releasing oil from the strategic reserve, which would contribute something less than 0.01% to the world's oil supply, and now he’s saying that removing Iran’s 5% of world production will not affect anything.

When it comes to Iran, I can't see how their having the bomb is such a huge deal for us. If they could actually build one and were ever to use it, their self destruction would be assured as the return fire would drop about a hundred on them. I think they're more dangerous from the perspective of wrecking the dollar, since they are working to undermine the petrodollar ways of OPEC. Our country, already mired in debt, needs the status quo to continue.

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About Me

I grew up in the Air Force, and served in diesel-electric submarines during the Cold War. I worked in the steel industry until it sort of died in the 80's, then in landscape management until recently, when health issues demanded retirement.

I believe government should intrude in the lives of its citizens to the minumum possible degree, but I also know that it must be big enough to
"get the job done." To me the job of government includes concepts that are usually thought of as liberal such as stringent regulation of necessary monopolies, regulating all business enough to prevent it from becoming predatory, providing necessary
comfort to citizens who are rendered destitute by calamity outside their reasonable control, and protection of our environment and natural resources.